Pierre Mollaret (1898–1987)

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Pierre Mollaret was born in Auxerre, France, on 10 July 1898. He began his studies in medicine in 1916, but soon his education was interrupted by World War I. During 1917 and 1918, he served as an assistant physician and when the war ended he was decorated with the Croix de Guerre. In 1919, he was a volunteer with a Polish group of light infantry and received the Order of the Campagne de Pologne. He returned to his medical studies in 1920 and finally received his degree in 1926 [1, 2]. During medical school, his interest in the nervous system was specially instigated by one of his professors, the eminent neurologist Georges Charles Guillain (1876–1961) [3], with whom he had the pleasure of working for more than 20 years. In parallel to his activity as a clinician, Mollaret defended a doctoral thesis in the field of nervous physiology, under the direction of Louis Lapicque. In addition, during the years 1928–1946 he was in charge of the conferences of the diseases of the nervous system at the Salpêtrière, in Paris, and in 1938 he was appointed as the general secretary of the journal Revue Neurologique. Mollaret’s interest in the nervous system resulted in important advances in neurology in the twentieth century [1, 2, 4] (Fig. 1). …